Ornette Coleman Quotes
36 Ornette Coleman quotes:
"It seems to me that in the western world, culture has something to do with appearance. A person that's out creating good stuff has got to appreciate someone when they take the time to have an appearance that goes with what they're doing."
Author: Coleman Quotes Category: American Musician Quotes
"Even when you write it, someone's got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you're still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I'm really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything."
"I don't know what they're thinking about. Just because someone says, 'I like what you do' or something: They might like it today and tomorrow they might not. I've had that experience with record companies."
"I remember once, we got an interview, and he said, 'Dad, these people are writing about me like I'm an adult. Don't they know I'm a kid?' I have never tried to encourage him to get a music image like other musicians have."
"No one has to learn to spell to talk, right? You see a little kid holding a conversation with an adult. He probably doesn't know the words he's saying, but he knows where to fit them to make what he's thinking logical to what you're saying."
"Originally, I wanted to be a composer. I always tell people, 'I think of myself as a composer.'"
"Actually, I have another record I made with them in 1976, but I've had such a bad experience with record companies, because I keep my head so much in music and not in business."
"I think that there are lots of people that play music, but, basically, they have other things that are motivating them to play music."
"It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something."
Author: Coleman Quotes Category: American Musician Quotes Mistakes Quotes
"I mean, if you decided to go out today and get you an instrument and do whatever it is that you do, no one can tell you how you're going to do it but when you do it."
"I remember once I read a book on mental illness and there was a nurse that had gotten sick. Do you know what she died from? From worrying about the mental patients not being able to get their food. She became a mental patient."
"I think those things that are in food are all chemically disastrous when they are placed in the wrong contents where human beings are exposed to it."
"I've been playing with Blackwell over 20 years. We used to play when I first went to Los Angeles. Blackwell plays the drums as if he's playing a wind instrument. Actually, he sounds more like a talking drum."
"It just makes that person feel that what his work is is going to be more valid. But who wants to see a guy standing in front, looking like a bum, doing something that a bums don't do? This don't make sense."
"Most of my relationships have been like that - with record companies. I've never had a legitimate business relationship with a company. I've always had a personal relationship with someone in the company."
"I've never had a relationship with a record executive. I always went to the record company by someone that liked my playing. Then they would get fired, and I'd be left with the record company. And then - because they got fired - the record company wouldn't do anything for me."
"Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time."
Author: Coleman Quotes Category: American Musician Quotes Jazz Quotes
"It's just someone has labelled us as having a different label to do what you do. I find that labels are the worst thing in the world for artistic expression."
"Those things are the results of what people see and hear that you do. But the human beings themselves are living on a multiple level."
"Actually, when I was in elementary school, I saw a saxophone. A band came to my school, and I saw this guy get up and play this solo. And I said, 'Oh man, what is that! That must be fantastic!'"